Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul. I'm Michael, and today my guest is a returning guest, Dr. Allison Cook. Hi, Allison.
Alison CookHi, Michael. So good to be with you again.
Michael John CusickGreat to be with you. We were saying this uh before we hit record, but we got to meet face to face finally at the Apprentice Gathering in Wichita last uh October when you and I and Kurt Thompson and Andy Kolber and Ian Cron um got to look at spiritual formation and mental health. So really cool to see your newest book, The Secure Soul, be a follow-up to that.
Alison CookYeah. Yeah, it's right at that intersection. It was fun to be with everybody.
Michael John CusickYou know, you you have become um renowned for being an expert in the intersection of religion in general, Christianity in particular, with mental health and psychology. You're a psychologist. Um and, you know, you you truly are an expert. And I was struck right from the beginning, um, even in the promotional materials, I think I read it in the acknowledgments where you said uh that it was really uncomfortable
to write this book because you had a very decided direction of being more personal and vulnerable. And um I I like to read the acknowledgments ahead of time. So I noted that. And then as I started to read and story after story after story, I'm somebody who writes books about my vulnerability. And I was like, I think you just, you just got the gold medal in vulnerability.
Alison CookYeah, well, because I haven't really told a lot of my stories. Very uncomfortable for me. People like you, I read your book page to page. I remember I sent you a note and I just I loved it. I got so much out of it. And a lot of what I get out of other people's work is the stories, right? It's hearing somebody's story through some of the things we teach. We live them just as much as we teach them. So I I uh Lisa Joe, who is my editor, gave me the invitation. She said, I'd love for you to tell some of your own stories and not just client stories. And I started, and to be honest, I it's very healing. Um, it was actually really healing to ride as I kind of connected with these younger places within me. So it really did become sort of there's definitely I'm definitely explaining what's happening, but I I definitely relied on my own stories as the illustration versus client stories. And and uh it was it was very healing, I have to say. It's it's it's it's a little vulnerable, but it's also really powerful to write in that way.
Michael John CusickAaron Powell Was it more difficult to write to actually get it out on paper because it was your story versus that of a client or someone you've worked with?
Alison CookIt was different. It required me to be more in my body. It required me to be uh more connected, which is what the book is about. So the book it reads, I think, a little different than some of my other books. It's a little more soulful, it's more contemplative. I'm um I'm really doing kind of trying to write as I genuinely am connecting to these places inside of me. So it brought out a whole different side of me that I know and the people in my life know, but isn't necessarily the side I've led with in past uh in past books. Yeah. Well, I really rewarding, but just I had to be in a different kind of space to write in that way.
Michael John CusickYeah. Well, I think that people will be so helped by it because you know, uh the Chuck Chuck DeGro talks about vulnerability, you know, the word F-A-U-X faux vulnerability. And um I I I can do that. Like I've got canned stories and everything that are vulnerable. And then there's other times where it's like, okay, I'm really gonna get vulnerable here. And again, the hopefulness of this is it was it was your gold uh content, which is kind of to be expected. That's what you do. You create really gold level content. But the vulnerability with it, I think, took it to just a whole other level. And there's just a number of stories that I'll let readers discover on their own. It's like, ooh, wow, that I was with you in those painful moments in the class in junior high. So thank you. Thank you for that. I think I think we need more and more and more uh people that have a voice, uh, people that are leaders and people that have platforms to to not have faux vulnerability, but to really put your heart out there in a way where it costs us something. Uh yeah, just
a blessing. So transitioning to then another personal thing, I love first lines of books. And I stopped doing this about 10 years ago, but I used to memorize opening lines of books, you know, great, great lines. And um so your opening line is a part of me doesn't like God very much. Un
unpack that.
Alison CookYeah, that was a real story in real time as I was writing it at the very beginning of this journey. And I put it in thinking my editor would never let me keep it in. And she was like, that's staying. That will not, that was literally what, literally the first line I wrote, which is never the case with first lines. And she was like, nope, that's staying. And I was like, Are you sure? Like, that's I don't know if we should start this book that way. But it was a really, that was a very genuine experience. I was on a prayer walk uh with my husband. My husband's very disciplined. He takes these prayer walks every night. We were in London, and he invited me to go with them. And I'm I'm not an evening person, I'm tired. It's you know, so normally I don't go, but I thought, well, we're in London, I should go. And and it was just sort of this inner dialogue that I had kind of internally with this kind of eight-year-old part of me that was like, I it wasn't just I don't want to pray. It was like, I don't like God, you know, kind of that energy of a, you know, of like a little kid. And and that's that was as I, again, she had given me that invitation to write more personally. I thought, well, I'll write this story and see, you know, what she thinks. Because this is this is how I genuinely, you know, it's what I teach, but it's genuinely how I've learned to relate to myself and be with myself. This model, this approach has kind of unlocked my inner contemplative, but it's helped me be more present to myself and get out of my head. I'm somebody who can very easily get trapped in my head. And and so that's what came out of me in that very first story. And it it really hasn't changed much since that that uh spilled out onto
the page that day.
Michael John CusickYeah, no, I loved it. And from an IFS perspective and some of your other material, which is obviously woven into this, just even the sentence a part of me doesn't work. Yeah. Exactly. So it's more than just the the the figurative uh literary way of saying a part, but like, oh, it was an eight-year-old part. It was a particular part of me. And there's a there's an invitation there to both uh as a reader be curious about what is that part, but then you modeling and the reader learning, I can actually begin to respond to, as you say later in the book, to these bids for connection.
Alison CookYes, exactly. Exactly. And then to
be afraid of them.
Michael John CusickYeah. So a bid for connection, first time I heard that was from John Gottman in marriage counseling and in, you know, relationship work. But you talk about inner bids of connection, which I just alluded to. So how is that moment of you walking in London with your husband? It's in the evening, you really don't want to be there, and then you say, a part of me doesn't like God. Talk about how that's a bid.
Alison CookYeah, I love that work by the Gottmans. That that's just I I love the work where they basically, you know, talk about how we're constantly giving each other bids, especially our our partner, our spouse, our significant either, but our children do it. You know, there's constantly that bid, like, look at look at what I did today at school, or look at the bird on the windowsill, or or you know, I am constantly giving bids like, look at all, look at how much I cleaned up the kitchen, you know, just whatever task that I've done. And and these are bids that we're hoping someone will see and meet with, wow, or yes, that's awesome, or whatever, just just tiny little bids all day long. And as I thought about the soul and I thought about how we can really navigate this sometimes murky terrain of our inner lives, I realized that those bids are coming from within us too, all the time. And it might be a flash of anxiety, it might be a wave of loneliness, it might be a trigger, you know, it might be a kind of an inner like, oh, I don't want to have this conversation. It might be a I don't like God very much. And and and come in big and small ways, but they're cues, they're bids that that something inside of us needs attention. And so often we just kind of try to shut those things down or we try to fix ourselves or we try to use willpower. And and as I've been shaped by this internal family systems model, which underlies what I'm trying to do here, the the idea is that um these, and I think about it through a the lens of attachment, these are inner places within us, they're movements within the soul where some part of us, whether it's eight years old, whether it's, you know, a current part of me, is saying, I something is happening here. I need you to see me. I need you to recognize, you know, me. I need you to, so in that moment, you know, I don't like God. It's like instead of, if you imagine again, attachment, I'm trying to apply attachment themes to our inner world, a parent and a child comes to you and says, Well, I don't want to go to church or I don't like God, you know, you your instinct might be to say, Well, you can't say that, or to try to get them to think differently. But really, what they're that's a bit. There's a tell me more about that. What what are you? I'm curious about that. I wonder what that's about. And that's what I want the reader to do within their own soul. I'm curious about that. My goodness, I didn't realize that was there. I wonder what
that's about, right?
Michael John CusickSo the subtitle of your book, The Secure Soul, and I've always got to like lean down and let my my reading glass contacts do the work, finding inner strength and connection when trust doesn't come easy. So a secure soul seems to be that uh a soul that can trust. Uh but the part one, part two, and part three, the book is divided into, and part one is how trust breaks. Talk about some of the ways that trust breaks. We're all familiar with that feeling of it, but how
do you line that out in the book?
Alison CookI used the lens of attachment theory. And if we think about attachment as, you know, young child in need of that secure loving base, that secure presence of a parent in a perfect world, which literally none of us had, even in the best of situations, there's that secure base where a child learns in their bodies, not just with their minds, that if I call, someone will come, or if I fall, someone will be there. If I fail, I'll have some place to return to, right? There's that secure base. Well, some of us got that more than others, but even again, in the best of circumstances, there are always gaps in that. There are times when no one does come. There are times when we are alone with our pain, to quote Gabor Mate's definition of trauma, right? Where we are alone with pain. Um, I love the work of uh Yalam, who talks about that existential feeling of isolation that is just sort of a universal reality that on some level no other human can fully understand my inner life. So even in the best of human relationships, that secure base, there are rips that occur, there are terrors that occur, there are moments in the soul when we're young throughout life where no one is there. And I, as I've kind of wrestled with attachment there, I've thought the thing that bothers me is sometimes in our culture, it's like I've got to find that perfect person to be that for me. If I didn't get it in my parents, I gotta find it in my spouse, you know, or I've gotta in my mind, I'm like, there's there's there's a source of attachment that transcends even the best of human relationships. And
that's divine love. That's God, that's capital L love. And so I wanted to speak into that place, not to say that it's not important, these early childhood relationships. They are that our you know, marital relationships, our friendships aren't important. They are all of that is important. But I'm trying to zoom in on those places in the soul where there are rips, where there are tears, where trust has been broken. You know, some of it's the big T trauma of deep betrayal, and some of it's the everyday wounds of just this happened to me and no one was there. And so shame comes in. And how do we reconnect in those moments to ourselves and to that secure base of love that is always there and that um we can tap into to increasing degrees, you know, with these different places inside of us. We can bring more and more and more of that secure base of love. We can train our souls to return to that love more and more and more over the course of
our life.
Michael John CusickTalk a little bit about that training of our souls, because that you know, that's a huge part of whether it's contemplative spirituality that's more mystical and historical, or the modern spiritual formation, you know, movement, which is probably four decades old within evangelical Christianity. But training, you know, that that can feel to some people like, oh, you're talking about discipline. I just need to be more disciplined and more therefore rigid, but I know you, and that's
not what you're talking about.
Alison CookYeah, I describe it as two movements in the book. The first one is recognize, so it's just a moment of recognition. I love that God made us in his image. And part of that is we have the ability not only to have a feeling, but to become aware of that feeling, right? That metacognition. So the recognition is, oh, I, gosh, I'm kind of mad at God right now, or oh, I'm I'm lonely right now, or oh, I'm I'm irritated right now. You know, that's the recognition. There's a recognition. So that's not willpower or discipline. That's just noticing. That's becoming aware. It's attuning, in a sense, to ourselves. We talk about the need to attune to the to our children. There's a way in which we're attuning to the movements of our own soul, becoming aware. And then the second movement is the return. And that to me is what is so different from the willpower or the self-help or pull yourself out by the bootstraps or fix yourself. And I I always see this in your work, Michael, so beautifully, but it's the, it's the, for me, the recognition of, you know, I'm angry or I'm frustrated. And then the return is hand on heart, I am loved even here. It's that deep breath. It's that I am loved even here, even in this place right now that I do not wish to be feeling,
you know? And so it's almost the opposite of willpower. It's almost a surrender to receiving the love of that secure base of God's love right there. And then, as you and I both know, paradoxically, that return to love is then what allows us to kind of take that deep breath, the nervous system softens, and then I actually actually have a better response in the moment. We respond out of that compassion. Um, and so that's the whole movement of the book is the learning to recognize and return. So a secure soul isn't a soul that doesn't have moments of, I have so many moments of self-doubt, of overthinking, of insecurity, of, you know, getting hurt. But a secure soul knows where to return when that happens.
Michael John CusickYeah, yeah. I love how you're saying that, where to return. And that the metaphor that you use in one of the chapters is being anchored in God's love.
Yeah.
Michael John CusickAnd that idea of returning, because there's an anchor that's attached there.
Alison CookYeah.
Michael John CusickUm we encounter a lot of people in our work who, if they are Christian believers, they may intellectually
know that God loves them.
Alison CookYeah.
Michael John CusickUh and yet they don't experience God as safe, as loving, as a secure place, and the idea or the thought. So how do you help people begin to, in the book, in particular, not necessarily in your in your therapeutic office, how do you help people begin to close that gap, as I say, between what they intellectually believe and what they actually experience?
Alison CookAaron Powell Yeah, well, this is where understanding attachment theory was really helpful to me and how it also affects how we experience God. And and that was my experience. I there's a chapter in the book where I share about another one of those middle school moments of I was raised in a home where we I was taught to read the Bible every day and do the right things. And um I tried to do those things and I have this very profound memory of, you know, laying in my bed at night and, you know, reading my one-year Bible devotionals for the day and crying out to God. And I had this capacity in hindsight, I realized, for deep connection. And I wanted that with God, but it just felt like a brick wall. It just, and I remember just feeling that pain of that aloneness,
you know, like 14, you know, 15. And that stayed with me in a college. In college, I had a profound experience of God's love, and that's a different story. But as I've recognized some of that movement within me, you know, the work uh when we think about it, our capacity to experience intimacy or connection is learned in the body long before what we believe. And that's true of God, right? I never didn't believe in God, you know, in my life. I always had the beliefs. But what I learned about what connection feels like, what withness feels like was another story. That grew out of a in my family of origin, that grew in the environment around me, right? And those, as our our friend Kurt Thompson talks about, those neural pathways for receiving, you know, if we think about our our brain as like a receiver for receiving that that and being able to process that experience of intimacy that some part of me was aware existed, but those neural pathways just hadn't been formed in my mind, right? Because I hadn't had that experience in my embodied life, even with loving parents. You know, I had very loving parents, but it it was the 80s. Um, and parents weren't trained to be attuned. That wasn't a thing as much back then. There was more of the keep, you know, there was a lot of structure, there was a lot of safety. I'm grateful for that. And then as far as Christianity goes, it was a lot of focus on behaviors, on morality, on the rules, you know? And so what you know, in in those days the rules were clear. And if I broke the rules or wanted something that didn't make sense within the rules, I was on my own with those feelings. I didn't have that attunement. And so I was on my own to make sense of some of that. And that left this sort of gap in kind of, you know, we I tended to map onto God how I mapped on to my parents, which is He loves me as long as I do the right things. You know, it wasn't that experience of closeness and connection that I craved. Some part of me craved even at a young age.
Michael John CusickYeah. And therefore, back to walking in London with your husband.
Alison CookYeah, exactly.
Michael John CusickIf if a part of you that believes
that God loves you feels like, oh, I don't like God very much in this moment for whatever reason, it's not going to feel comfortable to be able to go there and you've got to push that away. You can't respond to the bid for connection.
Alison CookAnd the irony of that moment is it was full of intimacy. You know, I was so happy to be with my husband. I was happy to be in the city. There was a lot of joy. And that part of me felt like connecting with God meant I had to shut all that down and be a good girl with her hands folded and her eyes closed. And here's the thing, Michael, to your question, intellectually, I know that's not true of God. But that was that felt embodied experience with God. And that's a different kind of training. That's not an intellectual, that's a how do I show this place within me that that give that place within me a different experience.
Michael John CusickYes. Yeah. And I I think that your books and your teaching give people permission to be able to go there. And then you give them language to be able to go there. But, you know, so yes, you have all these wonderful opportunities. You're in London and you're with your husband. So there's so much information when we do pay attention to those parts to be gleaned about that moment that could then free you up to actually enjoy London, you know, and to really have that rich experience. Yes. So the point of it all is to be able to enjoy the connection and the love and all the things that's there.
Alison CookYes. Yes. And that has come through these kind of these moments of recognizing and then returning when a part of me doesn't like God very much. Okay, I'm loved even here. Let's go with it. What is that about? What's going on there? You know, and retraining that, and then that capacity to experience connection in that moment grows.
Michael John CusickYeah. So we've we've referred to this eight year old part of you, uh, the junior high part of you. You have a whole standard low chapter
called Final. Find the young one inside. And this is a huge part of your work, and it's a huge part of IFS, although the language is a little bit different. You know, and for years, going back probably 26 years, uh, John Eldridge wrote a book called Waking the Dead years ago, where he started talking about the younger parts and the young one inside. And he's helped me so much in this. But so talk about the importance of this. And then so that I don't forget, because I my pen dropped on the floor before we started and it literally exploded. So I can't write this down. I want to come back to you you released, um, I think around the time of your book, these nine-minute little podcasts that are interspersed in between your longer ones. And I listened to one that a friend gave me on Bruised Not Broken, and that is related to this idea of the young one. So let's kind of put those two ideas together.
Alison CookAaron Ross Powell You know, and in all honesty, that chapter was one of the hardest ones to write for two reasons. One, that as a therapist,
I'm very well aware that going back to the young one can bring up trauma that should is best, we best go to those places in the in the companionship of a of a trained professional, right? Because sometimes those can be overpowering memories. And then the second reason it was hard for me is I don't, my story is not one of the big T traumas. It's a story of the everyday wounds. That that's my story. And so there was almost a part of me that felt like, is this, are my stories, do they matter enough? You know, um, are they in the grand scheme of pain in the universe? You know, are they but but as as people are responding to it, you realize we all have those everyday wounds and they they they stay with us. And so for me, it went kind of went all the way back to that core wound for me. And I I think a lot about family roles and family systems, how we kind of develop these roles in our families. And mine was the invisible one. Um, I had a very kind of larger than life older sister who was in trouble a lot, kind of a lightning rod for bullying, lightning rod with my parents. A lot of the relational intensity in my family was between my sister and my parents, for better and worse, right? She got a lot of positive attention, a lot of negative attention. And I just learned very early on, stay out of the way, just stay invisible. That is the path. That is the path to safety. I learned it at school. I was very hyper aware of kids who got bullied and hurt. I am an empath, so that empathy was birthed very by nature, very naturally in me. And then in my family, it was sort of um adulated in a in a way. It was in some ways taken for granted, right? You know, she's easy, she takes care of others. Great. Don't have to worry about that one, you know? And and very early on, you know, those are my memories when I go back of just being alone with often the pain that I was witnessing around me and didn't know what to do with, and not having anywhere to go with that. Sort of the Alice Miller calls it the burden of the drama of the gifted child. She's not talking about children with high IQ. She's talking about children that are unusually emotionally perceptive, which is a lot of women, a lot of the women I work with and some men as well. It's certainly uh both men and women, but where there's
that capacity to take in a lot, but when that's not seen and named, and when you're not helped to honor and steward that, um, you know, I became invisible. That was sort of my survival skill. Just disappear, be good on the surface and disappear. And in the Christian world, that also can get very adulated and can be praised, right? So your survival skill becomes affirmed in multiple different levels as a woman, as a Christian in my family. And it has taken me years to learn. And again, you know, so that's that's the young one, right? That that little girl always was worth loving too. That it wasn't her job to care for others. It wasn't her job to disappear, it wasn't her job to be invisible, you know, that she too, that there was a loving presence there and that that was there for her too. And, you know, in in my work, and I'm sure you see this too when we we think about neglect as opposed to abuse, those the memories of neglect, those places inside are are challenging to find because of the absence of presence.
Michael John CusickRight, right.
Alison CookThey're very and that was more my story of just just a lot of aloneness, kind of images of empty rooms and sunlit
rooms that just felt empty and lonely. The absence of presence, right? And finding those places and learning how to bring love into those places for me was my journey of finding the young one.
Michael John CusickThank you for all of that. Thank you for unpacking so much of your own story there. I have found with men,
I I don't know if I would say this is true as much with women, but it's often harder for people to engage in their work and to actually find healing as quickly when it's the absence of presence. Yeah. When those wounds of absence are there because it's like it's amorphous, it's murky, what is it? And we we survived, right? You use that word survivor. But the the person that's experienced um wounds of presence and explicit trauma that's always been there, like I grew up in a crazy family and it's like never had to question that. That's like I can get my hands on that and I'll get to work.
Alison CookYes.
Michael John CusickSo I mean, I appreciate you sharing that.
Alison CookYeah, yeah. It it it's it's true. We all have a certain kind of wound, and and those those wounds are are um but no less destructive. You know, that that led me into a lot of codependency, a lot of disappearing into other people's problems, you know, at the expense of my own health.
Michael John CusickSo well, you talked before we wrap up, Allison, about the shadow. You have a chapter called Love Your Inner Shadow. And in some circles, the word shadow, you know, is thought to be woo-woo or something
like that. Um and then in other circles, people just think that, oh, that means your sin nature, but that's not what you're talking about. So what is the shadow? What does it mean to love that part of us? Because this is a big, a big focus of all IFS and parts work is loving all parts. There's no bad parts.
Alison CookYeah, and borrowing with the shadow terminology from IFS, IFS terminology would think of it more as a firefighter, which is the
part of us that tries to put out the flames of pain through numbing, addiction, um any sort of, you know, Netflix, uh any sort of way that we try to numb pain. But I'm also kind of an amalgamation. I'm also borrowing from um Jung and some of the depth psychologists of this idea of the shadow being the part of us that's just been hidden. And I I look at the shadow as as the the part of us that carries the the the um, it sort of lives at the edge of the pain that we feel and our need for relief. And it it it can, the shadow, the shadow self can act out. And it's also a cue when we learn to listen to the bids of the shadow, the shadow gives us information about a longing or about a hurt or about something that we need. And so we don't want to exile the shadow, we want to steward the shadow, we want to shepherd the shadow.
And in the book, each each part takes a journey, but the shadow actually becomes, in a healthy soul, the seer. It's the part of us that kind of cues us something, something's happening here. I'm feeling something, something's off. Um, but sometimes that means it shows up as resentment or it shows up as, you know, feelings we wish we didn't have, but they're cueing us. And so we want to steward the shadow, we want to shepherd the shadow because it certainly can lead us to what we would think of as sinful behaviors. But it also is a cue uh that something's off, that something needs our attention.
Michael John CusickUm I want to come back to this. Uh first of all, a shout out to anybody who has not listened to your podcast, The Best of You,
strongly, strongly recommend it. You're on the Restoring the Soul podcast, but if you're a listener and you've not listened to Allison Cook on The Best of You, it's fantastic. And I again, I'm not sure when you started this, but you have full episodes, and then there's multiple ones that are shorter. And I listened to this nine-minute one. Were those a part of uh sections from the book or were there just ideas from the book? Because the one I listened to was the bruise not broken.
Alison CookYeah. Now it kind of came out of when you write a book, you always have all sorts of extra content. And so I thought, well, I'll just record these mini podcasts. And then they really took off. So I'm kind of trying to figure out where to go with it. Um but uh they've been really kind and I take a scripture and I try to unpack it through the lens of psychology.
Michael John CusickRight. Yeah. And so this one you did, uh, I think it was Isaiah 40. Uh correct me on the the destination of that chapter or verse, but it was a bruised reed, you will not break a smoldering wick, you will not snuff out. And I have a plaque in my office with that verse, so I should know it. But um but you talked about this idea of bruised and how the the metaphor is distinct from broken. And I was very drawn to it because, you know, I've made my whole career out of the word brokenness, both in my personal story and in my books. And I was like, oh,
this is so helpful for people that that don't necessarily identify with that shattered sense of they're not the piece of Konsugi pottery that's laying on the floor. Um, but bruised. So just comment on that and the tenderness that you communicated about Jesus uh attending to what's fragile and to what is bruised.
Alison CookYeah. I I love the metaphor of bruised. That's always felt very close to me, the idea of kind of bruised
places in my soul. And I love that scripture with the reed, right? That's kind of seemingly fragile, but it's actually it's actually not fragile, even though it is. Um and and how Jesus has, you know, I'm just I'm just so fascinated by with the ways that Jesus has this integrated both and of touching the places that are bruised with truth, right? It's not minimizing, it's not bypassing. There's truthfulness and just such a gentle, tender, you know, you just you think about that bruised reed, you know, just just such a gentle way of bringing repair. Um, and that word gentleness is just such, I love one of my other favorite proverbs I just did one on, um, is a gentle tongue breaks bone. You know, right? That there's there's a strength in gentleness and that and that bruised those bruised places, you know, when we can find them in the soul, that those are the places where that that tender touch of presence um brings that healing balm. And so I also think that kind of one of the things I was trying to do with that is to say sometimes that's where we are. We're not necessarily healing it. A bruise, you know, sometimes stays a bruise for a little while and you can still function. It doesn't, it doesn't stop you from your life. You're still going about the business of your life. And so sometimes we feel bruised, but or you know, we feel broken, but actually we're just bruised. And and it kind of can help reframe how we are to be tender with ourselves in those moments. You know, there's a there's a real honesty with that.
Michael John CusickYeah. And there again is training that we can actually train ourselves and be trained in community with the Lord to be
tender. I mean, what a what a wonderful spiritual discipline, right? Of the discipline of being tender with yourself. We we never hear about that one. Um, Dr. Ellison Cook, I want to thank you for your time for the labor that went into your book, The
Secure Soul: Finding Inner Strength and Connection when Trust Doesn't Come Easy. Thank you for being so vulnerable throughout the book. Uh, this has been a fun conversation.
Alison CookThanks, Michael. Thanks so much for having me.
Brian BeattySo we've wrapped up another episode of Restoring the Soul. We want you to know that Restoring the Soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the rut you're in, our intensive counseling programs in Colorado allow you to experience deep change in half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more, visit restoring the soul dot com. That's restoring the soul.com.